Thursday, 20 April 2017

Guy Bolton on Hollywood Scandals

My first novel The Pictures centres on a studio fixer
hired to cover-up the apparent suicide of one of the producers of The Wizard of Oz. So when people ask me
about it usually they want to know if it’s based on a true story.

The answer is complex. Yes, and no, I say.

“Was the producer of The Wizard of Oz found dead at his
home?” No. “Is Jonathan Craine a real
Detective?” Afraid not.“Was there a Hollywood star called Gale
Goodwin?” Sorry, I made her up.

At this point my disappointed
audience might make one last plea: “Were there even any scandals and cover-ups
in Hollywood at the time?”

Oh yes, more than one. So many you wouldn’t even believe me if I told
you.

Indeed, as I began researching my
novel I quickly realised that the truth, as the adage goes, was stranger than
fiction. Sure, there were rumours and gossip about movie stars then as there is
now: Clark Gable had an illegitimate lovechild; Errol Flynn was accused of
statutory rape; Spencer Tracy was an alcoholic; Judy Garland was addicted to
prescription drugs. But the starting point for my plot was actually MGM
megastar Jean Harlow and her producer husband Paul Bern, both of whom died
under mysterious circumstances in the early thirties.

On paper, theirs was an unlikely partnership.
Harlow was a wild-child who happened to be one of the most successful movie
stars of her generation. Bern was introverted writer-producer twenty years her
senior. So when the newly married Paul Bern was discovered naked in his
bedroom, shot in the head by a .38 calibre pistol besides a questionable
suicide note, naturally the movie studio was desperate to protect their star.

Studio police were on the scene
before even the LAPD. MGM’s Head of Publicity (the inspiration for my Russell
Peterson) released press stories that painted Jean Harlow as a victim of a
troubled marriage. Of course, the District Attorney chosen to handle the
inquest happened to have close ties to MGM Chief Louis B. Mayer – he was an
important donator to the DA’s re-election campaign. Not only did the District
Attorney rule that Paul Bern’s death was suicide, he even went so far as
stating that Paul Bern suffered from impotence, giving motive to him killing
himself and helping to whitewash anything that might threaten Harlow’s image.

A few years later Jean Harlow
herself was dead; gossip columnists speculated that Harlow had died of
alcoholism, maybe even a botched abortion or venereal disease. In the end, the
official line was that she died from kidney failure. She was 26 years old.

Rumours around Harlow and Bern’s
premature deaths persist to this day. Delving deeper, I discovered that our
studio-friendly District Attorney was later indicted for bribery and perjury
and in a twist of fate took his own life with a pistol to the head. But what
the case really highlighted to me was the obscene influence the studios at the
time had on the press and judicial system. It was the first of many examples.

One of the saddest scandals I came
across was the rape of a 20- year-old dancer by an MGM sales executive in 1937,
a tragic tale detailed in Vanity Fair
by David Stenn and later turned into a documentary Girl 27. Dancer and bit-part actress Patricia Douglas filed a
landmark lawsuit against MGM when she claimed she was raped at an MGM sales
convention. The tabloids soon discovered that the “sales convention” was
actually a lavish Wild West themed party MGM put on for its national sales
teams. After all, MGM was celebrating their success and survival in the
depression, coming out as the only major studio to make profits year-on-year.

For the studio, an accusation of
rape against its staff was bad enough. But as the story began to make headlines
nationwide, the real fear lay in the public’s perception of MGM as a the home
of wholesome family entertainment in the face of reports that it was throwing
depraved parties filled with free liquor and underage girls.

The studio used its press
influence to launch a smear campaign against Patricia Douglas, going as far as
hiring private investigators to follow her and dig up dirt. Inevitably, the DA
(still the same friend from the Paul Bern inquest), sympathetic to MGM’s
situation, used his position to block action against the rapist. Douglas’ case
fell apart.

In The Pictures, I have my own studio party and my own sad turn of
events. But nothing would ever match up to what happened to Patricia Douglas.
She soon fledHollywood and spent most
of her life alone. In interviews shortly before she died she admitted she never
truly recovered from the ordeal.

Drugs. Unruly stars. Debauched
parties. The influence of studios on press and the justice system. The
consistent and unashamed exploitation of women. I could go on. The Golden Age
of Hollywood was founded on a bedrock of sin and corruption.

But perhaps what’s most
interesting is that these key plot-points and themes are as relevant now as
they have always been. In many ways, the scandals of 1930s Hollywood were no
different to anything you might read in the paper today.

THE PICTURES
by Guy Bolton is published by PointBlank, hardback £14.99

The Pictures a noir thriller, is
set in Hollywood in 1939.World-weary
Jonathan Craine is a detective at the LAPD who has spent his entire career as a
studio ‘fixer', covering up crimes of the studio players to protect the
billion-dollar industry that built Los Angeles. When one of the producers of
The Wizard of Oz is found dead under suspicious circumstances, Craine must make
sure the incident passes without scandal and that the deceased's widow, the
beautiful starlet Gale Goodwin, comes through the ordeal with her reputation
unscathed.But against his better
instincts, Craine finds himself increasingly drawn to Gale. And when a series
of unsavoury truths begin to surface, Craine finds himself at the centre of a
conspiracy involving a Chicago crime syndicate, a prostitution racket and a set
of stolen pictures that could hold the key to unravelling the mystery.You can find him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @gpbolton